A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy is a self-proclaimed proud Georgia redneck.
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JEFF FOXWORTHY: If you've ever taken a beer to a job interview...
(LAUGHTER)
FOXWORTHY: ...You might be a redneck.
MARTÍNEZ: Foxworthy built a nearly 40-year career poking fun at his Southern roots and making uncanny observations about blue-collar life. His 13th and final comedy special is streaming now on Fox Nation. It's called "The Joke's On Me." Foxworthy says the special was inspired in part by a documentary he saw about The Beatles.
FOXWORTHY: Where, you know, they're struggling in the studio, and they're trying different lyrics, and they're trying different instruments and just showing the struggle of it. And I thought, you know, nobody's ever done that with stand-up.
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FOXWORTHY: All right. So I got some getting-older jokes. I don't know whether they'll work or not.
And I thought, let's do something different. Follow me into clubs on a Wednesday night with note cards and show me bombing and show...
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FOXWORTHY: ...Me struggling, trying to find a way to make a bit work.
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FOXWORTHY: So I came up with three boxes. I've got gold, silver and certificate of appearance.
(LAUGHTER)
FOXWORTHY: So I'm going to let y'all tell me what they go with.
You know, if you want to be a actor, you go to acting school. If you want to be a musician, you go to music school. There's no stand-up comedy school.
MARTÍNEZ: Except your local comedy club, right? That's school.
FOXWORTHY: Yes. That's the school.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
FOXWORTHY: That's how you learn to be a comic.
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FOXWORTHY: When you get older, do you know the difference between sex and a cup of coffee? You never turn down a cup of coffee.
(LAUGHTER)
FOXWORTHY: Huh?
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: Silver.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: Silver.
FOXWORTHY: Keep working it.
MARTÍNEZ: One of the things that was super interesting to me is that you actually kind of divulged the comedy math. Sixty minutes of comedy for a special equals a year on stage. One minute of comedy for every week on stage. I didn't know that there was, like, a math equation, and it sounds actually pretty solid.
FOXWORTHY: I guess it was 1984, and Jay Leno was probably the king of the road comics. And he said, your goal should be to write one new minute a week. And I remember sitting there going, are you crazy? A week? I can write 20 new minutes.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FOXWORTHY: And I found out over time he was exactly right. It's hard. It's trying to find that thing that's going to make a room full of strangers laugh every time you say it.
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FOXWORTHY: If the for-sale sign in your front yard was put there by your neighbors...
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FOXWORTHY: ...You might be a redneck. If the second half of your driving test was televised from a helicopter...
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FOXWORTHY: ...You might be a redneck.
I closed my first special in 1990 with you-might-be-a-redneck jokes. I wasn't smart enough to know that it was going to become a hook or a book or anything. In the beginning, I had people in New York telling me, you got to take voice lessons and lose that stupid accent you got.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FOXWORTHY: And they were laughing, going, Foxworthy, you're just a redneck from Georgia. But as I was traveling, I'm like, this isn't just a Georgia thing. And one night, I was playing outside Detroit, and the club we were playing in was attached to a bowling alley that had valet parking.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
FOXWORTHY: People were valet parking at the bowling alley. And I started laughing. I said, if y'all don't think you have rednecks in Michigan, go look out the window.
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FOXWORTHY: Tell you who else I think is weird - people that have, like, 50 bumper stickers on the back of their car. I just don't think I need to know your opinion about every political, social and religious issue...
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FOXWORTHY: ...Just because I pull up behind you at a red light.
MARTÍNEZ: The other thing with you is that politics have never really been a part of your act. Why have you stayed away from it? Is that a - like, a conscious decision to say, I'm not going to go there?
FOXWORTHY: Yeah, kind of. I mean...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
FOXWORTHY: Because early on, I had a lot of friends that did political stuff, and half the room hates you. My goal was to make as many people laugh as I could. And because, A, I really believe if you took people from different sides of the political spectrum - they could peg one side or the other - and you sat down with them and you said, what do you want out of life? We would probably agree on 85% of the things. But instead of celebrating that 85%, what we chose to do was to scream and throw things at each other for the 15% that we're different.
One of the coolest things about stand-up for me was before I did it, I had never been anywhere, never been out of the South. I've been to all 50 states and almost every part of all 50 states. And you realize, yeah, the accents change and the scenery changes, but people are people. That's the part that I chose to go after with comedy.
MARTÍNEZ: Jeff, this is being billed as your last comedy special. How can you be so sure that it's your last comedy special?
FOXWORTHY: I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure 'cause there's a lot of - I got to tell you, I am enjoying this season of life as much as any season I've had. I'm more content. I'm more at peace. And now, at this point in my life, I'm like, you know what? If I got a spare Wednesday evening, I don't want to be in a club with no cards in my hands. I'd rather be laying in the bed, reading to my grandkids. It's not because I didn't love this thing. It's because I love other things, too. And I've spent so much of my life doing stand-up that I'm like, you know what? I don't want to miss the good things in this season of life. I've done that. I've experienced that. And it's been so much fun. It's been wonderful, but - and I might do it again, but I'm thinking, I probably won't. I won't quit doing stand-up. I don't want to give away another year into writing another special.
MARTÍNEZ: Jeff Foxworthy's comedy special - hopefully, not his last one - is titled "The Joke's On Me."
FOXWORTHY: (Laughter).
MARTÍNEZ: And it's streaming on Fox Nation. Jeff, thank you so much.
FOXWORTHY: Man, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREA VERGA'S "BILLY IN THE LOWGROUND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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